When Sandra Bussin was elected to the amalgamated City of Toronto council in 1997, she was dubbed the “Giant Killer of East Toronto” for toppling four-term incumbent and TTC chair Paul Christie.

Four terms later, she was the giant.

In one of the biggest upsets in the city, Bussin — the council speaker and former deputy mayor who has held the ward with commanding leads since 1997 — was soundly defeated by a political unknown.

Mary-Margaret McMahon, a community activist and self-described fiscally conservative environmentalist, won by a margin of about three to one.

Bussin called her defeat “the end of an era” in Beaches-East York.

“The electorate has spoken and I accept that,” she said, before accusing her opponents of running a negative campaign.

Bussin was considered vulnerable for the first time in her political career after a number of political controversies.

She took a lot of heat for her role in granting an untendered 20-year contract to Tuggs Inc., operator of the Boardwalk Pub in the eastern beaches, which also happened to be a major contributor to her previous election campaigns.

The deal became a flashpoint for angry constituents, a powerful symbol for Rob Ford’s campaign against City Hall’s “gravy train” and an easy target for Bussin’s challengers.

Conceding her defeat, Bussin said she has no regrets about how she handled the Tuggs issue or any other in a particularly turbulent fourth term.

“Council made a decision about giving a continuation of a lease of a private-public partnership with the city and that was a decision of council,” she said. “Here I am trying to run a small grassroots campaign, it’s very hard when all the media keep mentioning something with a certain spin, but that’s life.”

Supporters with tears in their eyes hugged each other as NDP MPP Michael Prue looked at Bussin and shrugged his shoulders.

It was a very different scene at McMahon’s election party.

“The McMahon-can campaign has pulled into the station — and that station is City Hall!” she said to a packed room of supporters chanting her name.

“Over and over again we heard it was time for a change. . . . I believe we can make that change together.”

Then she made a crowd-pleasing dig at her opponent, comparing politicians to baby diapers. “They need to be changed often and for the same reasons.”

A staunch David Miller loyalist and standard-bearer of council’s left-wing faction, Bussin represented the status quo for the ward and city.

McMahon emerged as the leading challenger in the campaign’s final weeks. As the election moved into its home stretch, an “Anybody but Bussin” movement coalesced around McMahon as three candidates folded their campaigns to endorse the candidate most observers pegged as the best shot at unseating the veteran incumbent.

But most observers still believed it would be a tough fight to defeat Bussin, a venerable giant in the ward she has served — as trustee and councillor — for 22 years.

McMahon was endorsed by former Progressive Conservative leader and one-time mayoral candidate John Tory, as well as Green Party of Ontario leader Mike Schreiner.

Bussin had her own loyal constituency, bolstered by support from the Toronto Labour Council, local business associations, as well as federal NDP leader Jack Layton and local NDP MPPs Prue and Peter Tabuns.

Transparency, accountability and fiscal responsibility became the rallying cries of Bussin’s challengers, all hoping an angry electorate would help topple the well-entrenched incumbent.

But the Tuggs deal was not Bussin’s only obstacle. She was also criticized for using public money to sue a local newsletter for libel; claiming to be an ordinary citizen while calling into Tory’s radio show to defend Miller; her role in a number of divisive neighbourhood battles and for her council-topping office expenses.

Even her 13 years in office was criticized, with all of her challengers promising to vote for two-term limits.

McMahon campaigned largely on the strength of her activism and ecological initiatives — she founded the East Lynn Farmers Market and has spearheaded a number of community projects in the ward.

She also vowed to repeal the land transfer tax and make it easier for “the right kind of developers” to work in the ward by establishing a panel of community members that would grant approval at the neighbourhood level before developers go to City Hall.

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